It appears that liposuction as risen by 90% in the UK in the last year. The rate for men has stayed completely stable (gendered pressure anyone?).

Far be it from me to throw a blanket condemnation but shouldn’t that be a really, really bad thing? I mean for all our sanitised pictures it’s still causing grievous bodily harm to our bodies; going under a knife!

Think about that expression- “Going under the knife”. “Knife”- blood, pain, violence, destruction. “Going under”- depressive, drowning, accepting, sacrifice. There is no connotation of pleasure or self-self-fulfilment in that descriptive sentence unless your idea of a good time is sacrificing virgins like they used to in the stone age.

And to be honest I’m not sure we’ve stopped that. One only has to look at the disturbing virgin fetish in today’s pornography which is often linked with violence. Not mainstream enough? Not acceptable by the elite? I could argue that, but okay, let’s look at some other things once practised by everyone who was anyone:

– footbinding.
– corsets (they used to be so tight as to make women bleed under the arms and a thousand other horrors)
– FGM (still happening)
– Putting mercury (or was it arsenic?) on your face

I’m sure there are plenty more I’ve missed – feel free to add them.

I believe that cosmetic surgery is our modern form of foot binding and tightlacing.

In fact I’ve been meaning to write on that before. Nothing ever changes. Those barbaric practices have only been swapped around; a whalebone for a needle as it were. And, if I am correct, women are implicit in each one. Also known as Stockholm Syndrome.

There are some corsets out there that exist for health reasons and that does apply to some motives for surgical procedures, but the point that the majority who used them did so to incredible detriment and suffering on their part for the visual pleasure of someone else. After all:

“However, it is important to note that liposuction and tummy tucks are not a treatment for weight management or obesity: they are body contouring procedures for patients near or already at their ideal body weight.”

This is aesthetic surgery. Werther it is enterprise in the spirit of wanting to have more confidence, loosing baby fat, fitting anything it all seems to come down to looks. But not the way women look – women have looked pudgy (and dare I question if many going through this even are?) throughout all of peoplekind’s history. This is about the way men have decreed they want women to look and women have had no choice but follow through in the indoctrination.

Submission is, in part, taking pleasure in someone else’s happiness.

That so many women want to please people who would like them to mutilate and hurt themselves, tells me that the only way for the patriarchy to sustain itself is through forced and coerced masochism.

Growing up in France I heard this all the time – “Il faut souffrir pour etre belle” (“You have to suffer to be beautiful”).

Beauty and pain are almost seen as one and the same sometimes.

It is the mantra of a degenerate people bound on everyday oppression, the Stockholm Syndrome of women promising themselves that maybe, just maybe, if they do this they will be worth something. I think there has been some serious neglect and twisted brainwashing to make someone think a knife is a good and welcome option.

And look! It is the woman who must suffer, the woman who must present her body willingly on the altar of the surgeon, naked and eyes downcast. She is the one who must say “Yes, I am inadequate” and promise to do anything, pay anything, suffer anything so that He thinks she’s worth his time.

Ideas of beauty are also based on what aspects we elevate. It appears we elevate women’s capability to keep smiling pretty though her body is slowly being replaced with plastic. We elevate women who look like Barbies. Women who don’t have inner confidence. Women who follow the status quo size rack.

I believe in the power of stories to not only create worlds but reinforce our own. I believe that fiction has been a more constant force throughout peoplehood’s history than science has been. I also believe that a lot of the dissonance between religious myths and scientific fact has more to do with people wanting the story. I’m not saying they can’t go together- I’m saying that there are are two different brush strokes used to make those subjects and without a clever artist who understands both mediums the canvas breaks. Metaphysical world is not the physical.

I also believe that film is the medium through which our modern Odysseus and Achilles battle it out.

Nothing changes does it?

Of the current top ten films all of them are directed by men. There is only one woman who co-authored one film.

# Women accounted for only 7% of directors in 2005, representing a decline of 4 percentage points as compared with 11% in 2000.
– Celluloid Ceiling 2006 Report

# A comparison of women’s employment on the top 250 films in 2005 and 1998 shows that the percentages of women directors, writers, executive producers, and cinematographers have declined, while the percentage of women producers has increased.
– Celluloid Ceiling 2006 Report

# Women working behind the scenes influenced the number of on-screen women. When a program had no female creators, females accounted for 40% of all characters. However, when a program employed at least one woman creator, females comprised 45% of all characters.
– Boxed In: Women On Screen and Behind the Scenes in the 2003-04 Prime-time Season, by Martha Lauzen

# In Academy Award history, only three female filmmakers have been nominated for best director award (Lina Wertmuller in 1977, Jane Campion in 1994, and Sofia Coppola in 2004), but none have won.
– Women’s E-News

It’s important to choose your battles. I decided not to pursue script writing because I don’t have the energy to break through such a marble ceiling. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to write – I will. Hopefully I will be able to write successful books with crisp cover and themes that people care about. Maybe I will write a script one day.

But most of all I want to write women.

Because most of the women I read about or nothing like women I live and hear or want to hear about.

I want to write women that are ambitious and ruthless without wearing a power, leather type suit and being evil.

I want to write women who don’t need to be saved by a guy to cement the love interest (because he always needs that hint of superiority doesn’t he?). I want to write women that don’t even have to pine for a guy to be considered rounded.

I want women who get PMS and cramps, women who have greasy hair and pimples and hangnails and don’t get a makeover but are still cool.

I want women that fight crime in a comfortable jogging suit and trainers, with a realistic muscular build and hair cut short so it won’t get in the way.

I want women to be involved in social issues and to be the heroes of my own film noire, detective novel, without being as perky as Nancy Drew.

I want a woman who is empowered through her intelligence and compassion and love not her body and who isn’t considered a pushover.

I want women who aren’t thought of as bodies and types first.

Because people tend to write best about what they know, in an overwhelmingly male domain women tend to be badly presented. Some men do write fantastic female characters and perspectives and that is where the gift of empathy comes in. But a lot of the time those female characters are moulded as the supporting role.

There is a degree of wish-fulfilment in fiction. Men write about the type of men they want to be and the type of women they want to be with. Titular characters are often male because men have the prerogative of getting on and saving the world without the expectations of looking like a shop-window mannequin whilst doing it. Men’s life’s are limited by stereotypes but they are active stereotypes with a wide range of interests.

Which goes a way towards explaining why girls will read about boy’s lives but boy’s won’t read about girl’s.

Because here’s a little truth – the stereotype of what interests and consists of femininity can be really, really boring.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t deserve exposition- in fact there are many great novels that explore that issue and lives restrained by that- but that women are more than a pink apron or high heels and lipstick.

But, hey! It’d be nice if a woman-like-me could save the world for once.

I know I should really be doing coursework for now but today is Blog For Choice Day so here I am.

Let me start by saying that I don’t like abortion. Good – that’s cleared up. But then how many women getting abortions like it? Contrary to stereotypes women don’t skip into the clinics with sunshine and flowers and rainbows lighting their mental path.

Abortion is not a choice that is made lightly and there are real reasons behind it.

I believe that Abortion is a symptom, not a cause of social ills. Until poverty, discrimination, lack of education, rape, the wage gap, childcare and many more fundamental issues are dealt with abortion will keep coming up – and for good reasons.

Abortion has been around since the beginning of time in the form of herbs and violence against oneself. Desperate women are nothing new. It isn’t going away and whilst the debate for when life starts (which I refuse to go into because I can’t pretend to know despite my GCSE Child Development Certificate) life is ending for many women in countries where abortions are illegal.

I would rather those women had an abortion and lived to take care of their families – don’t you?

The point is that this comes down to an issue of autonomy. If you trust women to be fully intelligent and capable human beings then you should trust them when it comes to what happens to their bodies. Bringing a life into the world is so monumental that we need to leave that to the individual doing it and certainly not force it on them.

Being pro-choice does not mean loving abortion. It means recognising that some women are in very real situations where they have a real need for help and abortion provides that.

If you believe abortion is bad, fine. So do something about the root causes of it – help teenage mothers, financially and emotionally, help disenfranchised areas, support sex education, support research into mental and physical illnesses, don’t discriminate against working mothers and protest a culture that provides women’s self-validation only as sex-objects.

If we do all that then I think abortion will go down, and not just in the way that means women travel to another country, or secretly risk death with a coat-hanger out of desperation.

Until then- get the bloody hell out of my uterus.

There is a statistic going around that around 70% of Anti-Choice leaders are men. It is obscene and sickening that men feel the imperative to legislate women’s bodies. Because that is what it is – ussually rich white men sitting around a table deciding the fate of women they have never met and never cared about.

What happens to women’s bodies is women’s business, and until these men find themselves pregnant they have no say whatsoever in my eyes. It is absolutely none of their business.

If a woman decides not to tell her partner about a pregnancy and abortion – she’s probably got a good reason. Most of these types of decisions are made in the partnership after much deliberation. And even if they aren’t – the final choice should always, always be the woman’s because it is her fundamental right to human autonomy that is being dealt with.

It is her body. To legislate a person’s body is nothing short of oppression.

May I just say how much I love Ever After? Drew Barrymore is such a fantastic model for young girls in that film and doesn’t get saved by anyone once (except maybe, the bit where Da Vinci opens a door for her but let’s not quibble over something so small). I love that she stands up for herself and those she loves from beginning to end and doesn’t compromise her beliefs. Yeah, it’s really cheesy and somewhat over acted but it hits the spot. And both my parents were enjoying it at the end.

I need a pick me up. I figured out the other day that sexism is a key theme of all my classes and rape is discussed in near all classes. It seems to be one of the most common of all themes in literary or film (and least understood or misrepresented). Watching the rape scene from A Clockwork Orange in our course on Shocking Cinema made me feel so very ill. Having people claim that some elements were humorous scared me even more. I found it completely terrifying and nauseating. But then what does that matter? I’m sick of all our classes dealing with rape cases and yet refusing to call them for what they are – Measure for Measure by Shakespeare, Phantom of Liberty by Bunuel both feature a scene where a woman is coerced for sex against her desire. That’s called rape.

Thank God for the progressive stuff out there. Thank God I’m not blind to all that.

So here’s for the Friday Word- I’ve decided to put a poem I like:

Against Coupling by Fleur Adcock

I write in praise of the solitary act:
of not feeling a trespassing tongue
forced into one’s mouth, one’s breath
smothered, nipples crushed against the
rib-cage, and that metallic tingling
in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve:

unpleasure. Just to avoid those eyes would help-
such eyes as a young girl draws life from,
listening to the vegetal
rustle within her, as his gaze
stirs polypal fronds in the obscure
sea-bed of her body, and her own eyes blur

. There is much to be said for abandoning
this no longer novel exercise-
for now ‘participating in
a total experience’-when
one feels like the lady in Leeds who
had seen The Sound Of Music eighty-six times;

or more, perhaps, like the school drama mistress
producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream
for the seventh year running, with
yet another cast from 5B.
Pyramus and Thisbe are dead, but
the hole in the wall can still be troublesome.

I advise you, then, to embrace it without
encumberance. No need to set the scene,
dress up (or undress), make speeches.
Five minutes of solitude are
enough-in the bath, or to fill
that gap between the Sunday papers and lunch.

One of the first things that keeps coming up in every single discussion of domestic violence or sexual violence is that “Not every man rapes” and “people who do that are a minority that makes the rest of us look bad” or words to that effect. The response is of course “duh!”

We know that not every single man rapes. Of course we know that.

But pointing it out is as useful as telling a Jew living through WW2 that not every German is a Nazi.
(Forgive me for bringing up Nazis but I’m having problems thinking of another analogy.)

The man who does not rape doesn’t negate the threat possed by the one who does.

Gendered assault seems to be one of the main ways women are represented in the papers so we are constantly forced to see and, yet the statement implies we shouldn’t complain or remark on it. It’s seen as misfortunate but normal. Yet we all know that the vast majority of those types of crimes go unreported. World wide between three quarters and half of the female population will face domestic violence.

When the numbers and likelyhood of being affected is that big does it really matter if there are still men out there who aren’t perpetrators?

Does the battered, dying victim care that not all men are violent? Surely the only one who it matters about is the one who did that to her.

If a woman is walking home and it’s dark and a man is behind her, does it matter if that specific man has never commited a rape? She doesn’t know his police and moral record. What she does know is that there are men out there who do rape and because she is female she will never stop being a potential victim.

Because if one single man commits a rape or gender motivated crime, every man becomes a potential threat to every woman.

Contrary to stereotypes, rapists and abusers do not have a special look and uniform and the stakes are too high to ignore. We know that the likelyhood of being raped by another woman is minimal and ridiculous.

The common link in all the attacks is that they are commited by men (even raped men are usually attacked by heterosexual men supporting that rape is about power not sex).

Therefore the fear and distrust of men is completely legitimate. And the fact that not all men are guilty does not matter until none are guilty.

We don’t care one jot about the men who don’t hate women – do you think that deserves a prize? It’s a ridiculous disclaimer that does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Do we start every discussion on HIV/AIDs by saying “Not everyone in Africa is positive” as if that’s a distinction that needs making? No? Then why do we do it when talking about sexism?

This isn’t a call to hate men. It’s actually a call to respect women and go to the roots of the problems they face in this world. In fact to focus the issue on the woes of men’s image by association is an insult and slap in the face to those who have been victims of those crimes.

This is a call to stop patronising and ignoring the real systematic way in which women are hurt and suffer for comforts sake.

Put it this way – as long as women have a legitimate and ingrained fear of the male half of the human race, then neither will be able to enjoy as meaningful relationships as they could have. I do not want my girl friends to be afraid of what their boyfriend will do in an argument, scared of someone on the street because of gender. I hate that and I know it isn’t fair but as things are it is legitimate. Men and women live side by side and it stands to reason that if one group suffers so does the other.

So if you claim that not all men rape, what are you doing about the multitude that do?

I’ve got loads I want to write, and have been learning a lot of very interesting stuff I want to share but…

Turns out I think I’ve been studying too much. I finiched reading Nabokov’s Lolita yesterday, started Madame Bovary today (it is my goal to read notorious books that have been up for banning in the past) and this is obviously having an adverse impact on me.

After all who else announces the beggining of their period by quoting Shakespeare – “the multidunious incarnadine seas” are staining my panties, I said much to my mother’s general confusion.

So I think I need to bring things down a bit before I write a whole entry on Plato, as I threatened to do last night. So thus we have The Friday Word!

Here’s one unfortunate latinate word that never survived the Renaisance –

Obstestate – to bear witness. It comes from the old idea and practice of men holding their testicles to show sincerity.

Obviously macho posturing has a long, rich and varied history.

And I love how women are excluded from being sincere or a suitable witness because they can’t grab some odd-looking-dangly-bits-between-the-legs.

When I was little I was naive. I used to believe that the world was a very fair place and if it wasn’t all you had to do was say “That’s not fair!” loud enough for an adult to hear and they’d fix it for you.

And then I started maturing and I started to look at the world. Not just look – analyse. And it so happens that the world does not play by the rules I imagined.

Here’s a report that shocked even my cynical self:

The glass ceiling is still holding back 6,000 women from the top 33,000 jobs in Britain, according to new research from the Equal Opportunities Commission. Thirty years after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act, women are “woefully under-represented” in the country’s boardrooms, politics and courts, it says.

That’s a hell of a lot of women missing out. And these are in important jobs that represent where the real power is. These are the jobs that affect the way we live.

Help from nannies has not enabled successful women to maintain their careers after having children, the research suggests. The EOC blames a male-dominated culture in the professions for resistance to flexible working.

So, here’s the rub. Women are saddled with not only working but also with bringing up children -and they might as well be alone in that task. A childless older woman with a successful career is not considered fully successful. A man is. For a woman, others – the husband’s career or her children – must always, always come first.

There are two solutions to this that I see at the moment.

One is that men do their share of the housework and childcare.

The other is that every workplace installs better and free childcare centers in the building.

Since nannies are said to not be working it appears that it is up to men to make the difference on the work load at home and by changing the flexibility of working hours.

I dream of a time when a single income will support a whole family and each partner works part-time.

The upward trend in the proportion of women in top jobs is “painfully slow”, the report says, and in some sectors there is even a decline. The proportion of women in parliament has slipped in the 12 months since the EOC’s last Sex and Power survey and is now at 19.5% – lower than in Iraq, Afghanistan and Rwanda.

First of all – Rwanda is actually on top of the list with women leader’s world wide. But the reason is that all the men died in the Genocide. Women are in charge because there are no men left. Kinda like why women got jobs and suffrage after the first and second World War.

Crap, is the fallout of a Genocide the only way to get equality in this world?!

But seriously people – we have less women in government then Iraq and Afghanistan!?

There are no words. Except a sound rebutal of all those claiming we have reached the end of the road.

Here’s some numbers to get into –

At the current rate of improvement it would take 20 years to achieve equality in the civil service, 40 years in the judiciary and 60 years among FTSE 100 companies. But it would take 200 years – at least another 40 elections – to achieve an equal number of MPs in parliament. The proportion in the Scottish assembly is nearly 40% and in Wales the figure is 51.7%. The EOC said it was an argument for parties to use all-women shortlists, as in Wales.

Now, I only got a B in my Maths GCSE but even I know that’s pathetic.

And it gets worse.

But figures for women from ethnic minorities are worse. There are only two black women MPs, four non-white top 100 FTSE directors and nine top civil servants from ethnic minority backgrounds.

That’s right. Racism effects women too. Surprise!

I don’t think it’s conscious racism or maybe even sexism. It’s just that when no one sees women in power, women become invisible eventually completely disapearing from the higher concerns. We are defined by other people and as such we have no voice. Invisibility is associated with something not existing so there is no need to adress it.

This invisibility is present since the dawn of time – you only need to look at women’s history to notice.

The research suggests that women are experiencing the same barriers to getting the jobs they want as women in lower paid jobs. The pay gap between men and women is 3.7% in their 20s, rising to 10.7% for thirtysomethings, a change which is largely attributed to the impact of childbirth on women’s earnings. The same is not true for men who become fathers.

Small injustice on all fronts leads to big oppresion. That last sentence is the key.

Female workers in the UK suffer one of the biggest pay gaps in Europe – 17% for full-time staff and 38% for part-time – because they are more likely to be in low-paid jobs and then slip further down the career ladder after having children, the Women and Work Commission found last year.

*Sigh* Le plus ca change…

Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equal rights, said: “This demonstrates how much of a male preserve power remains in the UK. If decisions are only being taken by one group of the population they will not reflect the lives of ordinary people. It proves beyond a doubt that life at the top is white and male.”

The annual report is the last from the EOC, which is due to be amalgamated with the Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission from next year into a new body called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

There have been concerns that the women’s rights agenda could be sidelined in the new body, which will be headed by Trevor Phillips, current chair of the CRE.

“There is so much more to be done. This demonstrates that we haven’t solved the problem of sex discrimination,” said Ms Watson.

So here I am. Typing away on a keyboard and angry at the world I’ve inherited. Where does this leave me, I ask perhaps because I’m selfish, perhaps because I care?

It leaves me not represented in a government that styles itself a democracy.

It leaves me handicapped in a seld stylled meritocracy.

It leaves me unequal in a self-styled equal society.

But more than that it leaves me screaming. And I’m not going to shut up. Yeah, I’m pissed. But I’ve got a damn good reason.

And I’ve grown up and I’ve analised the situation- this is my conclusion:

For so long we’ve been treated as children and in some ways, us women have been children not given the chance to mature. Now we believe the world is a fair place and that surely if something is wrong we can call the kindly big white man and he’ll fix it for us. When it comes to social justice for women this has been a prevailing attitude – just wait a little longer, have another tea party and maybe they’ll fit in the rights of 50%+ of the population in their tight schedules – must be busy destroying all those countries).

But life isn’t fair and the big white man isn’t going to fix it. We need to grow up and grab our share with both hands even if it means throwing a tantrum (or participating in mass peaceful civil disobediance) along the way.

In this morning’s Argus Lite I had the pleasure of reading one of the most preposterously hilarious letters to the editors ever penned. The jist was “I saw some signs about lad’s mags and strip clubs being sexist but feminists would never have a go at homosexuals or lesbians enjoying porn so they’re politically correct hypocrites.”

After picking myself off the floor and wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes I started thinking.

The focus here is all wrong. It’s saying that men have a right and need to express their heterosexuality by enjoying the humiliation and vulnerability of women as if they’re was no other way to get aroused.

One person’s rights stop where another’s starts.

Men’s right to jack off does not overrule a woman’s right to respect and personhood.

Study after study has shown the detrimental effects of prostitution and stripping on women.

Lad’s mags do not respect women as people. Strip clubs are in the business of selling women’s body and looks for a man’s pleasure. Need I remind everyone that world slavery is more prevalent today then it was when it was legal? A large part of this is sexual slavery and traficking. The industry that promotes this serial rape and genocide is not one that anyone has a “right” to enjoy.

And what the hell does all that have to do with political correctness?

What it has to do with sexuality is interesting though. The key issue is consent or more precisely full autonomy of body and mind and soul.

If a woman or man is raped for the purpose of kicks it does not matter what the sexuality of the person watching the footage is. What matters was that the person was abused.

But lets talk about sexuality and porn for a second.

Another thing is that people in the GBLT community do not seem all taken by the porn out there anyway. It is incredibly heterocentrist that they would prefer the straight misogynist man’s version of sex. There is more than one expression of sexuality and I am not advocating an end to that. What feminists advocate are healthy ways that show both (or more!) members of the relationship as equals with equal enjoyment and equal drive.

Funnily enough that’s the definition of erotica that I found in one dictionary.

Yaoi (homosexual erotica) and yuri (lesbian erotica) are somewhat different. For one thing they tend to be written or drawn- the only people involved are the creator’s and viewers. And whilst those mediums are definitely not free from their problems (I’ve just started reading Lolita which I’m not sure what to label– it’s certainly a dangerous and terrifying but compelling book. Never mind the badly written smut out there that relies on gender clichés and transforms one character into the “female” subservient of the pair) there has been a lot more common decency involved than anything I have ever seen in any lad’s mags or heard of in any strip clubs.

Again, I don’t give a fig what people do in their bedrooms and what turns them on. What I do care about, as a feminist is the mental and physical well being of those around me.

Objectification is not healthy on any front – what the hell does sexuality have to do with that?

Why the hell would I advocate such a confused (and frankly ridiculous and irrelevant) stance because of the notion that there is only one kind of sexual pleasure, which is above reproach?

I’m astonished they even published such drivelling apologist ill thought out and researched crap.

For once this issue should be about the women’s rights not the men’s penises.

There is a mainly woman-only epidemic that’s been going around for a while now. Everyone knows about it and whilst much has been done to tackle this disease it keeps cropping back up.

Confidence.

Young women especially are notorious for their lack of self-confidence.

We are scared of being fat, we think we are ugly and we depend on make-up like it’s a life-support machine. And this is true for many of us.

Much is said about building self-confidence and belief in our own abilities. We are told that if we want something hard enough… Or at least that is how the philosophy goes. But really do we need it? Self belief and self confidence?

I don’t think that’s what we need to be focussing in on at all.

You see; it doesn’t matter how much you love your body and how much you respect it. As long as the people around you don’t, you’re screwed.

There is only so much love one can build from the inside before it is time to turn outwards.

Fact is women do not develop insecurities by themselves. When tabloids hate women’s bodies (and don’t tell me they don’t) and highlight with bright red circles all the bits that even slightly resemble real flesh instead of plastic it’s kind of hard to measure up. What, it’s not real? Those women are somehow separated from us normal people and we don’t judge ourselves on them?

May I call that complete and utter bull?

When hair anywhere apart from on the head is reviled and we are expected to pour hot wax on ourselves, wear painful shoes and spend all we earn on our appearance, how the hell can we love ourselves?

Men and especially other women expect of each other a standard that is impossible to reach. A standard of beauty that can be bought, bartered for and ultimately surrendered; penetrated.

How can someone be confident when they are harassed on the street, insulted because of their gender in the press, and judged all the time by perfect strangers?

No matter how much self-confidence you have that is damaging.

The world around me hates women in all their cellulite glory. It hates that we have hips and bellies. It hates stretch marks and lazy eyes, breasts that hand low, moles and bumpy skin. But these are all things that make women who they are. What are we to take from that?

How can we claim to be building self-confident young women whilst pervading our very culture with hatred of them as they are?

Women have done most everything we can on the inside over the last years. We’ve gotten educated. We’ve gotten jobs. We’ve gotten stronger and more aware of the issues of our world.

Now it is not a problem we can solve within us but a problem from without.